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Title: The Castaway
Author: George Danzell
Release Date: April 16, 2020 [EBook #61842]
Language: English
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THE CASTAWAY
By GEORGE DANZELL
Who was this bearded castaway of space?
Some said he was Jonah. Others thought
him a long-lost, mad scientist. But
Lieutenant Brait knew him by a name
that was old when the world was young.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was an ad in the classified columns of this week's _Spaceways
Weekly_. It asked for information concerning the whereabouts of one
"Paul Moran, last known to have taken off from Long Island Spaceport
for parts unlogged." Captain McNeally drew the notice to my attention.
He said, "Look at this, Brait. Wasn't Moran the chap we picked up in
the asteroids? It seems to me I remember--"
"You should," I told him. "You see his name twice every shuttle,
engraved on cold steel. And you can be thankful for that. But I don't
think he'll answer this ad. I don't think they'll ever hear from him."
"That," scoffed the Shipper, "is nonsense! Do you realize what this
means, Brait? This ad was inserted by the Government Patent Office.
There's a fortune waiting for Mr. Moran back on Earth, when he sees
this--"
"A fortune waiting," I said softly, "when and if he ever sees it. But I
wonder, Skipper. I wonder."
* * * * *
We were about three thousand miles north, west and loft of Ceres
when we first sighted him. I remember that well, because I was on
the Bridge, and our Sparks, Toby Frisch, had just handed me a free
clearance report from the space commander of that planetoid.
I read it and chuckled. I said, "Sparks, this bit of transcription is
a masterpiece. Nobody expects a radioman to be good-looking or have
brains, but blue space above, man, your spelling and grammar--"
"Leave my relatives," said Sparks stiffly, "out of this. Is the message
O.Q. or ain't it?"
"Yes," I told him, "with a light sprinkling of no. Sometimes I wish we
had a good operator aboard the _Antigone_. Like one of those Donovan
brothers, for instance."
"Them guys!" sniffed Sparks. "Too wise for their britches, both of 'em.
I'm a bug-pounder, not a joke-book. If it's smart cracks you want, why
don't you buy an audio?"
It was at this point that Lt. Russ Bartlett, First Mate of our ship,
who had been shooting the azimuth through the perilens, turned and
waved to me excitedly.
"Brait, take a look! Quick! There's a man down below! On one of the
minor asteroids!"
I said, "A joke, Bartlett? You'd better check the alignment of that
perilens. That's the Man in the Moon you see."
Gunner McCoy, Bartlett's staunchest friend and admirer, looked up from
the rotor port, wrinkled his leathery, space-toughed cheeks into a
frown, and squirted mekel-juice at a distant gobboon.
"Mebbe you better look, Mr. Brait," he said. "If Russ says there's a
man there, then there's a man there."
So I looked. And to look was to act. I cut in my intercommunicating
unit and bawled a stop hypo order to Chief Lester in the engine room
below. Bartlett was right. There was a single, bulger-clad figure
sprawled on the craggy rock of a tiny asteroid hurtling beneath us. A
man who lay there quietly, did not rise, did not wave, gave no sign of
noticing our approach even when I dropped the _Antigone_ down toward
the spatial island.
Bartlett, peering through the duplicate lens, said, "Dead, Brait. He
must have cracked up. He's not moving."
But there was no wrecked spaceship anywhere around. I said, "We'll know
in a few minutes." And then the Skipper burst into the bridge, startled
and curious. "Something haywire, boys? Here, I'll take over."
He was a good man, Cap McNeally. A hardened spacehound, canny and wise
to the ways of the void, always on deck in moments of emergency. That's
why the IPS, the Corporation for which we work, had placed him in
command of the _Antigone_, finest and fastest ship in the fleet.
But I calmed his rotors. "Everything O.Q., sir," I told him. "We're
standing by to take on a space-wrecked sailor. I think."
My guess was right. A few minutes later we threw out a grapple,
space-anchored the _Aunty_, and a rescue party landed on the asteroid.
They brought back with them a sad looking specimen of the genus _Homo
sapiens_. His cheeks were drained and sunken beneath a bristling,
unkempt beard; his skin was blistered frightfully from long exposure
to solars and cosmics; his limbs were so feeble that he couldn't walk
unaided. He had to be carried.
Someone unscrewed his face-port for him. He drew a long, deep breath of
the pure _Antigone_ air. His wan eyes lighted dimly and he spoke in a
voice that was a thin husk of sound.
"Thank you, gentlemen. I had hoped that at last I might--But you meant
well, I suppose."
Which was, I thought at the time, a damned strange speech of gratitude.
But I had no time to answer. For his knees suddenly buckled beneath
him, his eyes closed. Had it not been for the friendly hands that
supported him, he would have pitched forward on his face.
Cap McNeally snapped, "Sick-bay! Snap it up, you lubbers! The man's in
bad shape. Out on his feet, cold!"
Sparks whispered, "Gosh, he looks like a corpus!" as the sailors bore
our unexpected passenger away. I stared at him disgustedly.
"Corpse." I said.
"Huh?" said Sparks.
"Corpse!" I repeated. "Corpse!"
"You," suggested Sparks, "oughta take somethin' for that indigestion,
Lootenant. My sister had it. It made her a physical reek."
It's against the rules for a Second Mate to punch a radioman. So I
kicked him. There are limits.
* * * * *
That was our first meeting with the mysterious Paul Moran. We
didn't know his name then, of course. We learned that several days
later. After Doc Jurnegan, our medico, had coaxed, bulldozed and
sulfanilamided him back off the brink of the dark and nasty.
Doc was the first to tag Moran with the adjective we all, eventually,
accepted.
"It's the damnedest thing," he told me, "I've ever seen. Brait, I'll
swear on a pile of prescriptions that he didn't have one chance in a
million of pulling through. But he's still alive!
"By rights, he should have been dead two weeks before we found him.
Do you know he was on that asteroid five solid weeks? Without food.
With only one container of water. With the oxygen reserve in his tank
practically exhausted!
"And his condition--" Jurnegan shook his head uncomprehendingly.
"Deplorable! He was dessicated, undernourished, fouled from weeks in a
bulger. Acute cyanosis alone should have killed him. But--"
I said, "The will-to-live, Doc. It's the determining factor in many a
borderline case. I've heard of men with holes in their heads you could
drive a stratoplane through who simply refused to--"
"That's just it," said Jurnegan. "He _wants_ to die! He refused to take
food. I had to feed him intravenously and force him to drink. But in
spite of his physical and mental condition, he still lives. It--it's
mysterious, Brait!"
So I went in to visit our strange passenger.
He wasn't a bad looking chap, now that his whiskers had been plowed.
Thin, of course; hollow of cheek and eye. His skin was sallow, faintly
olive; the contours of his head long and narrow, short-indexed. He was
a typical Mediterannean, if what my profs taught me is right. Medium
stature, small-boned, thin, tapering fingers. Crisp, oily hair, black
as space.
I said, "Well, you look like a new man!"--which he did, and, "You're
looking fine!" I said--which he wasn't.
He turned his head slowly, studied me with grave, questioning eyes. His
voice was faint, but low and pleasing.
"You are Mr. Brait, the Second Mate? I believe I have you to thank for
having rescued me?"
"That's all right," I told him.
"Why," he interrupted gently, "did you do it?"
I said, "Oh, come now! You've got to perk up! You get a little flesh on
your bones and you'll feel better."
But he went on, as though not hearing my words, "It was a chance. The
best chance I've had for years--a thousand years--and you took it from
me. Out there I might have found peace at last. The power cannot--it
_must_ not--extend into the depths of space."
* * * * *
His voice had risen; there was a light of madness, of strange, savage
intensity in his eyes. I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck
pringling. I knew, now, that the man had not come unscathed through his
experience. He was space crazy. Wildly, desperately so. I said, in what
I hoped was a soothing voice,
"Now, take it easy, Mr.--er--Moran, isn't it?"
The ghost of a smile touched his lips, and his body became less tense.
He said wearily, "Moran--yes. Or Ader. Or Cart--Oh, anything you
choose. It hardly seems important any more. I've had so many, many
names."
That wasn't exactly encouraging. But at least he was quieter now. And I
had to know a few things about him to put in the ship's log. I asked,
"How did you get on that asteroid, Moran? Were you space-wrecked? If
so, what was the name of your craft? The authorities will want to know."
He answered, almost mockingly, "I was marooned."
"Marooned! But--but that's criminal! Who did it? We'll have them picked
up and punished!"
"You'll do nothing of the sort. They marooned me on that asteroid
because I deserved it and I respect and thank them for it!" His voice
was rising again; higher, shriller. "I thank them, do you hear? I bless
them, a hundred, thousand, million times. Though their effort was in
vain. I was, and am, a Jonah. A Jonah, Jonah, _Jonah_!"
He sat bolt upright in bed, screaming the word defiantly. Doc Jurnegan
raced in, glanced at me reproachfully and took his patient in hand.
"You'd better go, Brait," he suggested.
So I left. The sweat on my forehead was damp and cold. I needed a drink.
When I told Cap McNeally of my experience, he nodded soberly.
"I know, Brait. I saw him before you did. And he acted just as loony
toward me. Warned me he was a Jonah--"
"I'm not superstitious," I interrupted, "but there _are_ such things
as Jonahs. Men whose very presence aboard a spaceship seems to cause
trouble, dissention, disaster. You remember that Venusian blaster on
the _Goddard III_? The survivors always swore he caused the crack-up."
"Moran's case," frowned the skipper, "is more than just superstition.
He told me that he never wanted to see Earth again. When I told him
that was too bad, that we were headed for Earth right now, he warned me
solemnly that he'd do everything in his power to prevent our getting
there. So what do you think of that?"
"I think," I said glumly, "he's nuts! And if we pay any attention to
him, we'll all be nuts, too. Well, I've got to go, Cap. I've got to
check the shield generators before we go busting into Earth's H-layer."
And I left.
* * * * *
Well, I was busy for the next four days on my job. It was a plenty
important job, and had to be done carefully. The H-layer of the
planets--the Kennelly-Heaviside layer--is a supertensioned field of
force similar in composition to the corona of a star. A wide swath
of ionized gas with high potential, serving as a shield against the
murderous Q- and ultra-violet rays that emanate from solar bodies.
But the H-layer is a barrier as well as a shield. The first
space-flight experimenters learned that, and the knowledge cost them
their lives. For their craft hit the H-layer unguarded; and where had
been a glistening ship, now was pitted, blackened metal; where had been
life, now there was charred carbon.
Now all spaceships were equipped with shield generators. They were
"generators" by courtesy only; actually they were huge condensers
fed by cable lines tied at intervals to the hull plates. The theory
was that as the craft plunged into and through the H-layer, these
condensers would absorb the excess potential, thus allowing the ship to
pass through unharmed.
And it worked swell, most of the time. Oh, every year a few ships would
get theirs--would blow out in a blue wreath of coruscating flame--but
for the most part the trip was safe enough. Except, of course, when a
condenser was in bad condition. Which was why I was giving ours a check
and double check.
Still, I could never rid myself of a queasy moment when we hit that
blanket of spark-happy ionization. Particularly when a planet was at
aphelion as Earth was now. Because at such times the H-layer was more
highly activated than usual.
And to tell the truth, I wasn't satisfied with the way my work was
going. First I hit my thumb with a monkey-wrench. It didn't hurt
the wrench, but the thumb turned pale mauve and throbbed like a
sixteen-year-old kid's pulse on his first hayride.
Then I lost a brass collar off the hull-brace, and since we didn't
carry a reserve stock I had to ask Chief Lester to make me one. By the
time that was ready, I'd busted a .44 coil cable lock, and had to
jerry-rig a substitute.
Oh, it was a headache! But I wasn't the only guy on board the _Aunty_
who was having troubles. Slops raised a howl to high heaven because his
stove went on the squeegee. Gunner McCoy stalked into the officer's
mess one afternoon demanding what such-and-such so-and-so had stripped
the gears of his pet rotor-gun. Sparks burned out three vacuum tubes
in one day, breaking contact with all transmitting stations and almost
causing us to crack up on a rogue asteroid. Even Cap McNeally was
visited by the plague. He came wailing to me, on the bridge, that the
refrigeration units in the No. 3 storage bin had broken down.
"--and we've lost a whole binfull of _clab_, Brait! Worth at least six
thousand credits on Earth. The Corporation will be mad as hell."
"That's tough," I said, "but there's nothing we can do about it. It
wasn't your fault."
He eyed me curiously. "Brait--" he said.
"Yes, Cap?"
"I've been wondering--do you think there could be anything in what
Moran said? About him being a--a--"
"Jonah?" I'd been thinking the same thing myself. "I don't know,
Skipper. I wouldn't say yes, and I wouldn't say no. But there's no
doubt about it, things have been going haywire ever since we picked him
up. I'll be glad when he lifts gravs off the _Aunty_."
Cap said petulantly, "Of course it's just nonsense. Bad luck doesn't
hang around one man like that. It's against the law of averages. Still,
I wish you'd sort of keep an eye on him for the next three days, Brait.
Till we land on Earth. I've got a notion--"
"So has Earth," I grinned. "Five of 'em. Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and
the two Etceteras. What's yours?"
"It might," frowned the skipper. "Be sabotage. He said he'd do
everything in his power to prevent our reaching Earth. And he's up and
around now."
"If you think that," I suggested, "why don't you shove him in the
clink, just to make sure?"
"Can't do it. Because I've no _proof_ he's responsible for these
occurrences, and besides, a rescued passenger is entitled to the
courtesy of the ship."
* * * * *
So that's how I assumed, in addition to the rest of my duties, the job
of watch-dogging the mysterious Paul Moran. As Cap McNeally had said,
Moran was up and about now. He had made what Doc Jurnegan claimed was
the swiftest recovery in the annals of medicine. He still looked like
a skeleton in search of a square meal. But there was sanity in his
eyes. If not always in his speech. Like that afternoon in Sparks' radio
turret, for instance.
We had been talking, Sparks and I, about space-flight. What a great
thing it was. How, only in its infancy, it was already changing man's
outlook, widening the borders of man's domain, creating a newer,
greater universe.
"We got," Sparks said, "reason to be proud of ourselves. Gee, I was
readin' in the library--"
"You," I interrupted wonderingly, "can read?"
"Comets to you, Lootenant!" sniffed Sparks. "As I was sayin' before I
was so rudely ruptured, I was readin' in the library some old books
from the Twentieth Century. Just about a hundred an' fifty years old,
mind you! They had the craziest ideas about what men would find on
other planets, if an' when they ever got there. Flame-men, an' robots,
an' all sorts of things.
"Nothin' like what we actually found. 'Course, we shouldn't laugh at
'em too much. They had no way of knowin'. We're the first people ever
traveled in space."
"No!" said Moran.
Sparks said patiently, "Well, I didn't mean us here in this room. Of
course we ain't. But I mean the people of our time."
"And I still say," said Moran gravely, "no! Man in all ages is a
creature of conceit, self-pride, self-glorification. There was
space-flight long before you lived, Sparks. A race, long dead now, from
a neighbor planet."
I said gently, "You're thinking of those pyramids found on Venus and
Mars, Moran? I know that's a puzzler to modern science. And I've read
several theories regarding their builders. But most authorities agree
that their mere presence does not necessarily imply the existence of a
single race of engineers. The pyramid is a fundamental structural form.
Any intelligent race--"
"Man," said Moran almost sadly. "Man the dreamer; Man the doubter. No,
Lieutenant, I am not speaking of theories, now. I am speaking of tales
I've heard; accounts I've read in archives long molded into dust. At
least three times in the past have civilized races spanned the void. It
was the dying Martian race that first achieved space-flight. They found
Venus a rank and stinking jungle, but on Earth certain of them set up
their new abode." He smiled quietly. "And reverted to savagery, as is
always the case when civilized men, removed from the source of their
culture, find themselves face to face with stark reality.
"Then it was the Moon-creatures who fled their airless world, spanned
the distance to nearby earth."
I said, "That's an interesting thought, Moran. It explains the
coloration of the races of man, doesn't it? I'd like to read that book
you mentioned. Where can I get it?"
He shook his head sadly.
"You can't, Lt. Brait. The last copy of it was destroyed more than
twelve centuries ago. Simon Magnus was the last man to read it as I
remember. I loaned it to him--"
He stopped abruptly. But Sparks' eyes were plate-sized and incredulous.
"--you loaned it to him?"
I spun on Sparks, angry. Jurnegan had told us to humor Moran, help him
to a complete recovery. I didn't approve of this, not a little bit. I
snapped, "That'll do, Sparks! Good Lord, man--What's the matter, Moran?"
For suddenly his face had paled, his eyes widened in horror, and he was
backing away from me. He thrust out a trembling hand, gasped hoarsely,
"Have a care, Brait! 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy
God, in vain--'!"
Then he fled; his running footsteps clattered down the ramp, and the
echoes were strangely disturbing. Sparks stared after him, then made a
circular motion at his temple.
"Nuts!" he said. "Crazy as a loon, Lootenant."
* * * * *
Oh, he was an odd one, that Moran. Those next days are somehow garbled
in my mind. They were so full of incident that now, looking back upon
them, I can hardly distinguish between that which actually _was_, and
that which an active imagination conjured for me out of fancy.
This I do know--it was the worst trip I've ever experienced in the
_Antigone_ or any other ship. Something was always wrong. Lt. Russ
Bartlett, whose mind is as accurate as the cogs of a computing machine,
discovered to his dismay that he had made an error in calculation; that
at our present rate of speed we would miss Earth entirely and plunge
Sunward at a rate that would destroy us all. He discovered that by
sheer accident, and just in time to scream a hasty, "Cut hypos!" to the
engine room, else I wouldn't be here to tell it. Then there was that
mysterious occurrence in the galley. Our cook had a pet cat, and if it
weren't for his habit of feeding the pussy before he fed the crew, half
of us would be stiff now. Because the cat slopped up its dinner and
forthwith proceeded to give up all nine of its lives simultaneously.
Ptomaine, from faulty food tins. The first time such a thing had
happened in more than forty years!
You couldn't say Moran was behind either of these near-disasters. For
I was dogging his footsteps; I'll take my oath he was not involved.
Physically, that is. But they say a Jonah's curse works even though the
Jonah takes no actual part.
Oh, he was an odd one, that Moran. For instance, the time Sparks'
selenium plate blew out. It was Moran who got permission to use
the machine shop, construct a substitute out of a uranoid-steel
atmochamber. We used that freak audio throughout the trip, then
replaced it with a standard one when we reached Earth. Like dopes!
Because two years later that screwball First Mate of the _Saturn_
"invented" a uranium time-speech-trap exactly like the one Moran made
us. He earned a quarter million credits from it. Imagine!
Then there was the time, as we were approaching the Lunar outpost,
that our calculating machine jammed. Lieutenant Bartlett and Cap
McNeally were in a dither trying to figure the approach velocity. It's
a fifteen-minute job for the machine; a six-hour job for a man's brain.
But Moran, who happened by, glanced casually at the declension chart,
said, "Cut to forty-three at 3.05 Earth Standard, Captain. Maintain
full speed for point three five parsecs, alter declension to north one,
loft seven, fire fore jets twice--"
Having no better idea, McNeally did as Moran suggested. And we warped
past the Moon oh-oh-oh on trajectory!
* * * * *
Which put us within scant hours of Earth's H-layer. And which also
roused in me the realization that the mysterious Paul Moran was more
than the ordinary space-sailor he pretended to be. Maybe I'm snoopy,
I don't know. Anyway, I went to the radio room. I told Sparks grimly,
"You and I are going to find out just who or what this Moran guy is.
Send a message, Sparks. To Fred Bender, at Long Island Spaceport.
Tell him to find out if there's a scientist missing who answers to
this description. Five feet, seven and a half inches; a hundred and
twenty-five pounds, dark hair, brown eyes--"
The relay of that description and the subsequent reply took longer than
I had anticipated. That's why Sparks and I were among the last to learn
of the new trouble. We didn't learn until, excited, we burst onto the
bridge, confronted the skipper with our information.
"Look, Skipper!" I yelled. "No wonder 'Moran' was able to fix Sparks'
radio and set your course! Do you--"
And the Captain raised haggard eyes to me.
"Brait, where have you been? I've been audioing all over the ship for
you."
"In Sparks' cabin. Listen, though. Moran is--"
"I don't care," said the skipper wearily, "who he is. And in a
little while, nobody else will, either. Your check-up, Mr. Brait,
was a miserable failure! We are only an hour and a half out of the
H-layer--and the shield generators refuse to function!"
I just stared at him for a minute. When I caught my breath, there was
only enough of it for one word.
"Impossible!"
"Impossible, maybe," acknowledged the First Mate, "but unfortunately,
Don, the Captain's right. Three lead-in cables are broken, the
stripping is off the condenser."
"But--but everything was in perfect order an hour ago! I don't
understand! Yes, I do! Moran! He said he'd destroy us all if he got a
chance! Skipper, there's the answer. He's done it. The madman--"
Then there was a mirthful chuckle in the doorway, and Moran was
standing there looking at us, his thin lips wide in a smile.
"You're right, Brait. I _did_ do it. But I'm not a madman. I'm a happy
man. The happiest man who ever lived!" His eyes lighted triumphantly;
he stretched his arms above his head in a great, yearning gesture.
"Soon will come freedom! The great, everlasting freedom of death."
"Get him!" said the Skipper succinctly. Gunner McCoy lumbered forward,
his long, hairy arms encircled Moran's body. The Skipper pawed his
graying thatch. "This is no time for reproaches, Mr. Brait. I told you
to guard this man; for some reason you failed to do so. But now our
problem is to repair the damage he has done. Or else--"
His pause was significant. But Moran's quiet, mocking laughter
persisted.
"It is useless, Captain. Not in hours, no, not in weeks, will you
repair the damage. Don't you see--" There was a feverish light in his
eyes, a shuddering vibrancy in his voice. "Don't you see that I bring
you the greatest of all boons known to man?
"Death! Wonderful, blissful death! Death that I have sought so long ...
so hopelessly."
Those were the last words I heard for some time. I dashed from the
room, Bartlett, Sparks and McCoy at my heels. We picked up the Chief
Engineer. We covered the _Antigone_ from stern to stern. And our worst
fears were realized. It was no use. The damage Moran had done was
irreparable.
Russ Bartlett said, "There's only one way out. We mustn't try to
penetrate the Heaviside layer. We must shift trajectory, pass Earth
and remain in space until we get the shield generator operating again."
And Chief Lester said somberly, "Have you forgotten the trajectory you
planned, Lieutenant Bartlett?"
"The trajectory?"
"I thought it was unusual," rumbled the engineer, "when you called
it down to me. It's paper-thin, balanced on a knife-edge between
counter-gravitations. If we try to shift course now, we'll tear the
ship into shreds!"
I knew, now, why Moran had come up with such a ready answer when the
computer failed. He had planned well. He had deliberately forced us
into this trajectory from which there was no escape.
* * * * *
Back on the bridge, we found Captain McNeally pacing the deck like a
caged cat. Moran was silent, watchful intent, with an unholy gleam
of justification lighting his curious eyes. The skipper looked up
hopefully as we entered.
"Well, gentlemen?"
Bartlett shook his head.
McNeally was silent for a long moment. His glance roved the smart,
glistening interior of the _Antigone's_ control room. I knew exactly
what he was thinking. It was too bad that this smooth perfection, this
finest ship built by master craftsmen, should become a brief, winking
flame in the atmospheric borders of Earth.
And it was tough that we must all go out together like this. Through no
fault of our own. Through the machinations of a space-mad castaway. He
turned to me. "Lieutenant Brait, you and Sparks will go to the radio
turret. Send a complete report to the Earth authorities. Tell them--"
He gulped. "Tell them why the--the _Antigone_ will not come in."
I said, "Aye, aye, sir!" mechanically, and started for the door. But
Sparks stopped me.
"Ain't you gonna tell 'em what we learned?"
"Eh?"
"About _him_?"
He jerked his head toward 'Moran'.
"It doesn't really make any difference now," I said. "But--" I suppose
my voice was scornful. There was scorn and bitterness in my heart.
"They might as well know that the man who has condemned us all to
death is--or was--one of Earth's greatest scientists. Had he not become
a raving lunatic his genius could have stemmed this disaster."
McNeally said, "What's that, Lieutenant? What do you mean?"
"I mean this man's name is not 'Paul Moran'--"
"Names," murmured Moran gently. "What difference does a name make? When
one has had thousands of names."
"His name," I continued, "is John Cartaphilus!"
Bartlett said, "Cartaphilus!" In a leap he was at our strange guest's
side, his voice eager. "Then he will--he _must_--help us!
"Cartaphilus, listen to me! Of all men, only you have the genius to
devise some way of escaping this peril! You've been mad, sir! Insane
from your privations! But now I beg that you cast aside this madness,
come to our rescue!"
Moran--or Cartaphilus--brushed his hand aside. A dreamy look was in his
eyes.
"Death at last!" he whispered. "Oh, sweet boon of mankind--death! I who
have suffered so long, waited such a long time--"
"Can't you hear me, man? Snap out of it! Time is growing short. In a
half hour, maybe less, we'll nose into the H-layer. And then--Please,
sir!"
But there was no reply. Captain McNeally looked at me uncertainly. "Are
you sure, Brait?"
"Positive. I forwarded a description to Bender at L.I. He said
Cartaphilus has been missing for a year and a half. He fled Earth
because of a scandal. It seems--"
"Never mind that now." McNeally confronted the insane scientist. "Mr.
Cartaphilus, you must help us out of this jam! We're not thinking only
of ourselves, but of the mothers and children waiting for us on Earth.
And of the future of space-travel. If the _Antigone_, the finest ship
ever built, blows out in the H-layer, it will strike a heavy blow at
all astronavigation. Help us, sir! For Heaven's sake--"
Cartaphilus spoke suddenly, sharply.
"Don't say that!"
"Only Heaven can save us now," said McNeally simply, "if you won't.
It's our only hope. May the Lord help us if you--"
"Don't!" The strange, thin man screamed the word. Suddenly he buried
his face in his hands, and his words were an incoherent babble of
torment. "Don't you see what you're doing? Man, have you no pity?"
He raised wide, tortured eyes. "The endlessness of time--" he
whispered. "But I thought that, free of Earth, lost in the depths of
space, I might at last find peace. But now you call upon me to save you
in His name.
"I won't do it! I won't! The power cannot force me, here in the void.
Two thousand years.... No! No!"
* * * * *
McNeally stepped back, torn between dread and doubt. He shook his head
at us. "It's no use. He's completely mad."
Then Russ Bartlett cried, "Wait! _Listen!_"
For Cartaphilus, his face worn and aged, had bowed his head as
though surrendering to forces greater than his will-to-die. And he
was droning in a drab, lack-lustre voice, "Tell the engineer to
reverse the polarity of the alternate hypatomic motors. Transmit the
counter electromotive force helically through the forward coils.
Use full power. Keep all motors running at top speed. Cut out the
intercommunicating and lighting systems; there must be no D.C. current
in operation anywhere on the ship. The cross-currents will--"
Chief Engineer Lester's face was a masque of blank dismay. He husked,
"A hysteresis bloc! It might work. Nobody ever thought of it before."
"What do you mean?" That was Cap McNeally.
"His suggestion. Heterodyning the web-coils, so we'll counter the
H-layer radiation with an alternating current of our own. It's just
about one chance in a million!"
"Then take that chance!" cried the skipper. "Try it! Do as he says.
And, for God's sake, man, _hurry_!"
Cartaphilus, his eyes drained of all expression, rose sluggishly. Once
more he spoke, faintly. "It will work," he said. "It will work, and I
have failed again. And all because I would not let Him rest...."
His voice broke in a great, wrenching sob. Then he lurched from the
control room like a broken thing.
* * * * *
I never saw him again. No one aboard the _Antigone_ ever saw him again.
For the next hour we were in a turmoil, rearranging the electrical
units of the ship as Cartaphilus had told us. We finished our task just
in time; scant seconds after we had thrown on the power we nosed into
the web-like field of force which is the H-layer.
It was a breathless moment. Despite our efforts, there was not a man of
us but expected a brief, brilliant instant of horror--then oblivion.
But we were as wrong as Cartaphilus had been right. There was a jolt
as our forcefield met that of Earth's shield; the permalloy hull of
the ship sang and hummed and glowed cherry-red under the impact of
that terrific electromotive strain, but we slipped through the barrier
with greater ease than ever had any ship using the old style shield
generators.
In our jubilation we quite forgot the mad scientist whose strange,
last-minute change of mind had saved our lives. We landed. And sometime
between the moment of landing and the moment when we remembered our
passenger, he fled. Disappeared completely from the ship and from our
lives.
Cap McNeally was nothing if not a square-shooter. He refused to take
credit for the invention that had brought us through the H-layer. The
patent rights were taken out in the name of our deranged passenger.
The "Moran H-penetrant" it is called. All spaceships used it until
just recently; until Cap Hawkins of the _Andromeda_ and the Venusian
scientist, Jar Farges, discovered Ampies could be used as H-layer
shields.
But afterward, Cap McNeally came to me, wondering.
"Why should he have wanted to die, Brait? I can't understand it. A man
like John Cartaphilus; wealthy, intelligent, respected--was he really
mad, do you think?"
I hesitated. I, too, had been wondering about that. I had gone so far
as to look up the life history of the mad scientist. I had found
several curious things. No man knew when, or where, John Cartaphilus
had been born. All agreed that he was "remarkably youthful" in
appearance. It was rumored that he had outlived a wife married in
youth; that she had been an elderly woman when she died.
I said, "I told you there had been a scandal in his life, recently,
Skipper. It concerned a friend of his, a worker in one of his shops.
"Cartaphilus was, and is, a genius, but he has a reputation for driving
his men too hard. They say that on this occasion, seeking the answer
to some problem that evaded him, he forced this assistant to labor for
weeks, begrudging him even a few hours sleep each night.
"On the eve of the solution of the problem, this worker came to him,
nervous, ragged, exhausted, begging for a brief respite. Claiming he
was sick with overwork and fatigue. But John Cartaphilus insisted,
impatiently, there was no time for rest. He ordered the man to get
about his work.
"The job was completed. But the friend died. The doctors said it
was a pure case of exhaustion. When he heard this, Cartaphilus'
brain snapped. He blamed himself for the man's death, fled Earth. He
became--or so we may believe--the wandering spaceman we found in the
asteroids."
Cap McNeally frowned.
"Do you believe that story, Brait?"
I started to say no. I started to tell the skipper something else I had
discovered while probing into the life history of John Cartaphilus.
Something that, to my mind at least, more fully explained the oddness
of our erstwhile passenger.
It was an old legend I had run across. The queer story of a man with
many names ("I have had so many names," Moran had said) who wandered
endlessly about the Earth, perhaps the universe now, simply because he
had not let another rest for a moment on his doorsill.
Sometimes this man had been known as Cartaphilus. He had also been
known as Juan Espera en Dios, as Ahasverus, and as Butta Deus. The
Parisian gazette, "Turkish Spy," had in 1644 A.D. reported his presence
in that city traveling under the name of "Paul Marrane." But men in
general knew him by a more descriptive name. The Wandering Jew. The
Eternal Jew....
But I did not tell Cap McNeally this. After all, it was a fanciful
thought. And surely Moran--or Marrane, or Cartaphilus--was mad when he
claimed to have met and talked with Simon Magnus twelve hundred years
ago?
Anyway, when we saw that ad in the classified columns of this week's
_Spaceways Weekly_, and McNeally claimed Moran would return to claim
his reward, it raised again the question in my mind.
Will he return? Or will he find, at last, whatever peace awaits him out
there? In the vast emptiness of space, where the power cannot--must
not--extend? I wonder....
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